The Leavenworth Case, Anna Katharine Green [chrysanthemum read aloud TXT] 📗
- Author: Anna Katharine Green
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Mr. Gryce thrust his hands into his pockets and, for the first time, showed some evidence of secret disturbance. “Yes, I am afraid she is; I really am afraid she is.” Then after a pause, during which I felt a certain thrill of vague hope: “Such an entrancing creature too! It is a pity, it positively is a pity! I declare, now that the thing is worked up, I begin to feel almost sorry we have succeeded so well. Strange, but true. If there was the least loophole out of it,” he muttered. “But there isn’t. The thing is clear as A, B, C.” Suddenly he rose, and began pacing the floor very thoughtfully, casting his glances here, there, and everywhere, except at me, though I believe now, as then, my face was all he saw.
“Would it be a very great grief to you, Mr. Raymond, if Miss Mary Leavenworth should be arrested on this charge of murder?” he asked, pausing before a sort of tank in which two or three disconsolate-looking fishes were slowly swimming about.
“Yes,” said I, “it would; a very great grief.”
“Yet it must be done,” said he, though with a strange lack of his usual decision. “As an honest official, trusted to bring the murderer of Mr. Leavenworth to the notice of the proper authorities, I have got to do it.”
Again that strange thrill of hope at my heart induced by his peculiar manner.
“Then my reputation as a detective! I ought surely to consider that. I am not so rich or so famous that I can afford to forget all that a success like this may bring me. No, lovely as she is, I have got to push it through.” But even as he said this, he became still more thoughtful, gazing down into the murky depths of the wretched tank before him with such an intentness I half expected the fascinated fishes to rise from the water and return his gaze. What was in his mind?
After a little while he turned, his indecision utterly gone. “Mr. Raymond, come here again at three. I shall then have my report ready for the Superintendent. I should like to show it to you first, so don’t fail me.”
There was something so repressed in his expression, I could not prevent myself from venturing one question. “Is your mind made up?” I asked.
“Yes,” he returned, but in a peculiar tone, and with a peculiar gesture.
“And you are going to make the arrest you speak of?”
“Come at three!”
XXXVI. GATHERED THREADS “This is the short and the long of it.” —Merry Wives of Windsor.
PROMPTLY at the hour named, I made my appearance at Mr. Gryce’s door. I found him awaiting me on the threshold.
“I have met you,” said he gravely, “for the purpose of requesting you not to speak during the coming interview. I am to do the talking; you the listening. Neither are you to be surprised at anything I may do or say. I am in a facetious mood”—he did not look so—“and may take it into my head to address you by another name than your own. If I do, don’t mind it. Above all, don’t talk: remember that.” And without waiting to meet my look of doubtful astonishment, he led me softly up-stairs.
The room in which I had been accustomed to meet him was at the top of the first flight, but he took me past that into what appeared to be the garret story, where, after many cautionary signs, he ushered me into a room of singularly strange and unpromising appearance. In the first place, it was darkly gloomy, being lighted simply by a very dim and dirty skylight. Next, it was hideously empty; a pine table and two hard-backed chairs, set face to face at each end of it, being the only articles in the room. Lastly, it was surrounded by several closed doors with blurred and ghostly ventilators over their tops which, being round, looked like the blank eyes of a row of staring mummies. Altogether it was a lugubrious spot, and in the present state of my mind made me feel as if something unearthly and threatening lay crouched in the very atmosphere. Nor, sitting there cold and desolate, could I imagine that the sunshine glowed without, or that life, beauty, and pleasure paraded the streets below.
Mr. Gryce’s expression, as he took a seat and beckoned me to do the same, may have had something to do with this strange sensation, it was so mysteriously and sombrely expectant.
“You’ll not mind the room,” said he, in so muffled a tone I scarcely heard him. “It’s an awful lonesome spot, I know; but folks with such matters before them mustn’t be too particular as to the places in which they hold their consultations, if they don’t want all the world to know as much as they do. Smith,” and he gave me an admonitory shake of his finger, while his voice took a more distinct tone, “I have done the business; the reward is mine; the assassin of Mr. Leavenworth is found, and in two hours will be in custody. Do you want to know who it is?” leaning forward with every appearance of eagerness in tone and expression.
I stared at him in great amazement. Had anything new come to light? any great change taken place in his conclusions? All this preparation could not be for the purpose of acquainting me with what I already knew, yet—
He cut short my conjectures with a low, expressive chuckle. “It was a long chase, I tell you,” raising his voice still more; “a tight go; a woman in the business too; but all the women in the world can’t pull the wool over the eyes of Ebenezer Gryce when he is on a trail; and the assassin of Mr. Leavenworth and”—here his voice became actually shrill in his excitement—“and of Hannah Chester is found.
“Hush!” he went on, though I had neither spoken nor made any move; “you didn’t know Hannah Chester was murdered. Well, she wasn’t in one sense of the word, but in another she was, and by the same hand that killed the old gentleman. How do I know this? look here! This scrap of paper was found on the floor of her room; it had a few particles of white powder sticking to it; those particles were tested last night and found to be poison. But you say the girl took it herself, that she was a suicide. You are right, she did take it herself, and it was a suicide; but who terrified her into this act of self-destruction? Why, the one who had the most reason to fear her testimony, of course. But the proof, you say. Well, sir, this girl left a confession behind her, throwing the onus of the whole crime on a certain party believed to be innocent; this confession was a forged one, known from three facts; first, that the paper upon which it was written was unobtainable by the girl in the place where she was; secondly, that the words used therein were printed in coarse, awkward characters, whereas Hannah, thanks to the teaching of the woman under whose care she has been since the murder, had learned to write very well; thirdly, that the story told in the confession does not
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